SOURCE: Rozett, Martha Tuck. Review of Much Ado about Nothing. Shakespeare Bulletin 21, no. 3 (fall 2003): 131-33.

In the following review of director Daniela Varon's 2003 Shakespeare and Company staging of Much Ado about Nothing at the Founders' Theater in Lenox, Massachusetts, Rozett praises Varon's fine realization of the play's festive qualities and comic virtuosity.

Seldom does a Shakespeare play with a modern setting manage to evoke a particular time and place as thoroughly as Shakespeare and Company's production of Much Ado about Nothing. Daniela Varon's Messina, inspired by popular images of Sicily in the 1950s, is steeped in the culture of violence and family loyalty associated with the Mafia. The oft-repeated word “honor” becomes a keynote in this production, for as Varon says in her director's notes, she is interested in “what it is to speak and to act honorably, what it really is to be a man of honor...